Knee-jerk reactions to poor performance in the workplace rarely serve the intended purpose -- to improve employee job performance. Some small-business employers mistakenly rely solely on progressive discipline policies and even demotions to inform employees that they're not living up to the employer's expectations. Employee-friendly, non-punitive methods work well to achieve specific performance outcomes.

Company Expectations

The company's expectations for employee performance typically are part of the recruitment and selection process. Employers who identify solidly qualified candidates typically give them a copy of the job description. When the recruiter or hiring manager neglects a full explanation of what's expected of the successful candidate, it's akin to setting up the prospective employee for failure.

Encouraging employees to strive for high performance levels begins long before the employee's performance becomes problematic. Therefore, if your employee demonstrates lack of skill, necessary qualifications or expertise to do her job, ensure you've provided her with the tools she needs to understand the company's expectations.

Training and Development

Aside from providing candidates with job descriptions that contain relatively detailed duties and tasks, supervisors or small-business owners can help employees improve their performance through providing appropriate guidance. Although guidance often is seen as merely supervisors coaching their employees, coaching is a form of performance management that involves constructive feedback, training and -- particularly in cases that involve employees with leadership potential -- employee development. Enabling employees to acquire the skills and expertise they need to improve their performance includes identifying weaknesses, establishing performance goals and investing in training that turns those weaknesses into strengths.

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Employee Coaching

Regular and frequent communication with poor performers is tantamount to improving job performance. Small-business owners should address deficiencies with poor performers as soon as their weaknesses become obvious. Procrastinating just makes it a bigger challenge to correct areas where the employee needs more supervision, training and coaching.

A supervisor-employee coaching session usually is informal and may differ significantly from the annual performance appraisal. Employees need two-way communication with their supervisors to become aware of areas where they need improvement. Waiting until the employee's annual performance appraisal to inform him that his performance isn't up to par is unfair, and it wastes valuable time. Performance issues addressed as soon as supervisors observe them may be rather simple to resolve.

Human Resources Guidance

Small businesses with dedicated human resources departments often provide supervisors and managers with support in handling performance management problems. HR staff can help with two groups of employees ranked as poor performers: employees who make genuine, yet unsuccessful, attempts to improve their performance and those whose stubbornness prevents them from adopting solutions to improve their performance. These are issues where your HR department -- if you have one -- may need to be involved in preparing a performance improvement plan or participating in a supervisor-employee meeting to reinforce the company's policy on job expectations and performance.

Job Matching

Poor performers aren't always just lazy employees, nor should they be classified as workers who don't want to improve. The onus is on the employer to appropriately match the right jobs to employees with the skills to perform certain jobs. Before you assume that an employee with poor performance simply does not want to work, look at your company's practices for assigning duties to employees based on their qualifications, skills, aptitude and interest.

Resources

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About the Author

Ruth Mayhew has been writing since the mid-1980s, and she has been an HR subject matter expert since 1995. Her work appears in "The Multi-Generational Workforce in the Health Care Industry," and she has been cited in numerous publications, including journals and textbooks that focus on human resources management practices. She holds a Master of Arts in sociology from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Ruth resides in the nation's capital, Washington, D.C.